Radio Waves Podcast #242

Radio: April 3, 2020

Did you know that the town of Castaic has its own radio station? Indeed it does. KHUG is a low-power commercial-free FM community station broadcasting at 97.5 FM. You can hear it online (www.khug.rocks … I never knew there was such a domain) or via your smart speaker.

According to the website, KHUG is curated as art … “every song played on the air is chosen by a music lover, not an algorithm.” There’s a special show highlighting bands from the area, a roots of rock show, and more. The format I suppose is primarily blues rock, something I found quite nice.

The station began broadcasting in January, 2017  from a ridge overlooking the Santa Clarita Valley, and according to the website, they “proudly play more music than any station in Southern California … We’re having fun, and hope that you enjoy listening!”

Frosty Out

Another cut at KLOS (95.5 FM) with the news that Frosty Stillwell has been let go from the morning show. Stillwell had been part of the show since August of 2016 when he reunited with the rest of the “Triplets,” as they were known when the show was heard on KLSX (now KAMP, 97.1 FM) and later KABC (790 AM). Heidi and Frank had joined KLOS in 2012, replacing the long-running Mark and Brian morning show.

Decreased advertising revenue is the given reason in this case specifically, but this is just a continuing trend at the station. A few months ago almost all of the weekend/fill-in staff was let go, replaced with computer-recorded voice tracking, where a DJ records his or her announcements and a computer inserts the recordings at the appropriate time. This makes you wonder if Lisa May, previously part of the morning show, decided to retire a short time ago because she saw what was coming down the pipe.

What’s Next?

It’s a tough time in radio due right now to the COVID-19 shut down. But the virus could go a long way to making radio relevant again. Instead of more music, less talk, computer-delivered re-recordings, how about talking to your listeners, actively engaging them on the air? Doing what some shows already do — I’m thinking Stryker and Klein on KROQ (106.7 FM), Heidi and Frank, some of the local talk shows — and doing it all day? Some stations are doing this, but when you only have live personalities from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m it’s a bit difficult. 

Keep your format in tact, but let your DJs get more personal on the air. Open up to letting music radio be a foreground listening experience again, rather than background. This is an opportunity to bond with listeners show are craving new entertainment sources while they are safe at home … give it to them. Now.

Harsh Cuts

Jerry Del Colliano reports on his Inside Music Media that the major radio ownership groups are in the process of speeding up “dislocations” (aka layoffs and firings) … using COVID-19 as an excuse to do what they were going to do anyway. But the CEOs? Their pay is intact.

According to Del Colliano, iHeart has suspended matching 401k match, and no one really expects it to return. Entercom has already fired an entire staff or part-timers. And more is to come, including the possibility of having no actual studios at all: talent using their own studios at home as they become independent contractors. 

And Then

COVID-19 slowed down the plan, but Saul Levine announced last week that once the crisis is over, live personalities will return to K-Mozart, found on line and via HD digital radio (special tuner needed) at 105.1 HD4.

If you have an HD Tuner, online access or a smart speaker — Alexa, Google and Siri can all play K-Mozart — you can hear the commercial-free classical music right now. It’s been available for many years but Levine wants to make it a viable, compelling alternative to KUSC (91.5 FM).

Radio Waves Podcast #241

KOST (103.5 FM) continued settling down back to normal after its traditional holiday boost, but it still managed to dominate the Los Angeles ratings released last week. For the month of February, the adult top-40 station earned a 5.7 rating, down from 6.5 in January and 13.7 during the holiday season, but a half-point above second-place KRTH (101.1 FM)’s 5.2.

KFI (640 AM was the top-rated talk station as usual, and the top-rated AM station in town, earning a 3.8 share at tied for 7th place overall … and proving that AM radio is still, indeed, viable. News radio KNX (1070 AM) was not far behind, with a 3.0 share at 10th place. Unfortunately, the next highest-rated AM station was way down and tied for 29th place at 1.1, that station being KRLA (870 AM).

Alt 98.7 FM beat out KROQ (106.7 FM) but just barely: Alt at 2.6 vs. KROQ at 2.5;  Alt tied for 12th and KROQ tied for 14th. Keep this in mind when you hear about the ousting of KROQ’s entire morning show.

For a change, the news was good for KABC (790 AM), which while still low at 0.9 and tied for 35th, was the station’s highest rating in recent memory.

And just because I love the call letters, it is nice to still be able to mention KHJ (930 AM) in spite of the fact that they don’t let me program music on the station. For the month, KHJ was 47th place with a 0.1 share. Yes, it’s low, but the call-letters are still around after almost 100 years.

Each Nielsen rating is an estimate of the percentage of listeners aged 6 and over (also called “six plus”) tuned to a station between the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight.

1. KOST (5.7) 2. KRTH (5.2) 3. KTWV (4.7) 4. KBIG/My-FM (4.5) 5. KIIS (4.4) 6. KLAX (4.1) 7. KLVE, KFI (3.8) 9. KCBS-FM/Jack (3.5) 10. KNX (3.0) 11. KLOS (2.9) 12. KYSR/Alt, KRRL/Real (2.6) 14. KROQ, KRCD (2.5) 16. KKGO/Go Country (2.4) 17. KPWR/Power, KLYY (2.3) 19. KXOL (2.2) 20. KSCA, KPPC (2.1) 22. KAMP/Amp Radio (2.0) 23. KUSC, KKLQ/K-Love, KBUE (1.6) 26. KLLI (1.4) 27. KDAY (1.3) 28. KFSH/The Fish (1.2) 29. KRLA, KJLH, KCRW (1.1) 32. KLAC, KKJZ, KEIB (1.0) 35. KWIZ, KSPN, KABC (0.9) 38. KKLA, KDLD (0.7) 40. KFWB (0.6)41. KCSN/88.5 FM (0.5) 42. KTNQ (0.4) 43. KWKW, KSUR/K-Surf (0.3) 45. KYLA, KPFK (0.2) 47. KHJ (0.1)

Cutbacks

You probably read in this very newspaper that Kevin Ryder and the entire morning team of Kevin in the. Morning (formerly known as Kevin and Bean until a month after Gene “Bean” Baxter left the show) was, according to Ryder, “fired,” laying to rest the remnants of a program with a 30-year history in Los Angeles.

Now, 30 years is an amazing number, one of the longest ever. For comparison, most shows historically — I am thinking Robert W. Morgan on KHJ, Charlie Tuna on KHJ, Ten-Q and a few others — tend to last five or so years, the better deals occasionally lasting longer. The point being that longterm associations with any station are rare.But to suggest that it was ratings is wrong. Had it been ratings, they never would have offered Kevin the chance to continue the show in the first place … Kevin and Bean had long passed their ratings prime. But it was a heritage show and brought a lot of street cred to a station that desperately needed it against relative newcomer Alt 98.7.

In my opinion, it was the economic conditions the radio industry finds itself in after years of neglect. Station ad rates are at an all-time low, and the companies that own the stations are desperately trying to remain afloat. So it all comes down to money. KROQ, now being owned by Entercom, is just like the others, cutting talent that makes “too much” … that decision being decided by executives who rake in big salaries while the companies they run slowly die.

Correction

Last week I mentioned that a competing digital radio broadcasting system called DRM is used in numerous other countries. I received an email correcting me, and while the writer prefers to remain unnamed, their information is correct.

“You mentioned the digital radio system DRM (for Digital Radio Mondiale) and said that DRM is ‘in most of the rest of the world.’  In fact, the only country to make widespread use of DRM is India, and at present there are approximately 1 million receivers in that country.  By contrast, there are over 70 million HD Radio receivers now in the US which are capable of receiving AM-band HD Radio signals.”

Many countries are just shutting AM — and sometimes FM — off. This could be a big thing as we move forward.

Radio Waves Podcast #240

Radio is responding to the novel Coronavirus pandemic, though unlike, say, toilet paper, radio stations are on the hunt for in-demand items like microphone windscreens and remote codecs.

They need windscreens so that each personality can have their own to prevent the spread of viruses, and codecs so that stations can have personalities broadcast from remote locations — including their own homes — via computers.

Like other businesses, many station owners are having as many employees telework, including people in sales, programming, and engineering. Personalities are next, as home and remote studios are connected. It may make for an odd sound for a while, but it is one way stations are coping.

On the Air

I was talking to my wife about how cool it would be to program an AM music station — you may have heard me say that before — when I realized, there actually are a small handful in our area already.

Not what I would do exactly, but it at least gives a fighting chance for those who own a fully stock classic car from the 1960s or prior to listen to the radio without adding an FM converter. In case you missed it we have:

KSUR (1260 AM), playing oldies from the 1950s through the ‘80s. The signal is limited, unfortunately, as the transmitter was originally designed to serve the San Fernando Valley area, but it does reach most of the metro LA area and parts of surrounding cities.

KRDC (1110 AM) playing country via a Disney — yes Disney — programming service. The signal is still a bit weak — the original KRLA used the same frequency and broadcast site, and it was never stellar in the fringe areas. But it does hit metro LA strongly.

XEPRS (1090 AM) plays a version of top-40 from studios and a transmitter based in Rosarita, Mexico. Interestingly, the format is a simulcast of KJAV/Brownsville Texas, which is an FM station at 104.9. It is primarily an English-language station but some cool Spanish-language songs are in the mix as well.

More AM

Over the years there have been a few attempts to “revive” AM radio, as FM stations grabbed the available audience away from the once-dominant band. The most known is AM stereo, which was approved for use in the 1980s even though it dates back to the 1950s (stereo was developed for AM at roughly the same time as FM but the FCC refused to allow its use on-air in order to help give struggling FM stations an audio boost). While the various systems worked well, it was a bust for a variety of reasons.

Other initiatives included a system in which the audio was actually harmed in an attempt to boost perceived audio quality on bad AM radios. It worked by boosting the highs on the station’s end, so that cheap/bad radios would pass through more treble and help the sound. Good radios ended up sounding distorted and harsh unless they had the appropriate circuit to counteract … that system is still in place. FM actually uses something similar.

To cut interference between stations, stations were eventually ordered to limit fidelity. The idea being that humans (especially older humans) don’t hear much above 10 KHz, so just roll them off. So while it worked to reduce interference, temporarily as it turns out, stations sounded worse once again.

The latest improvement is digital in nature, called HD radio (AM and FM) in the US and a competing system DRM (AM only) in most of the rest of the world. Currently, the systems operate in hybrid mode, in which a digital stream “sandwiches” the analog signal, to be decoded by special radios. The system works reasonably well, especially on FM.

But while the AM is almost eerie when the digital signal kicks in, there is a problem when it comes to HD AM in that the analog signal is compromised. Analog audio is cut even more — to 5 KHz, the same as an old telephone, to allow the digital signal to “fit” within a station’s frequency space — and the digital signal actually causes more interference to adjacent stations than the old high fidelity version of AM before all of this started.

It’s basically a hot mess, though when received well, AM HD sounds great.

But now there’s a fix: all-digital AM. The idea is that if you turn off the analog signal, you can fit the digital signal well within a station’s assigned frequency, increasing fidelity even more and reducing/eliminating interference. Basically, the idea is to do to AM shat was done to television. The big downside? Most current radius won’t pick up the station, obviously limiting the size of the audience.

The FCC has been allowing some stations to try it out experimentally; now it proposes to allow all-digital AM for any station that wants to try it. On a volunteer basis. The commission was taking comments in response to the proposal through March 9; our own local Mount Wilson Broadcasters owner Saul Levine sent me his comments in support of allowing AM stations to broadcast in 100% AM digital mode, which I’ll quote in part below:

“AM in the 100% digital mode would provide better performance and be competitive with existing FM facilities. Operating in the 100% digital mode, however, will take many years to become profitable until a majority of radios are compatible with the technology,” wrote Levine.

“Mount Wilson took a gamble in 1959 placing an FM station on the air when AM was dominant and FM receivers were not prevalent, but the investment paid off. AM operators need to approach this new technology and its challenges the same way. One hundred percent digital AM has the potential to revive the AM Band. We urge the Commission to adopt a policy of allowing AM stations to operate full time with digital technology.”

The FCC is expected to rule on the issue in the coming months.